His skating is fine, people always try & talk like they are experts on skating, when I watch him he gets up & down the ice pretty quickly, he's not Formenton, but he's not Mark Stone either. He's not graceful, he's more likely to run through you than around you although he does have some dangle to his game. Funny when little guys dangle, people get giddy, when a big guy does it they say he won't be able to do that in the NHL & yet we see NHL guys get beat all the time.
They were in a position where there were four defenceman left & while most picked the other guys as better players, I didn't see that & thought they were much closer in talent level than people would give credit for. Yakemchuk had a 30 goal season tying a 10 yr old record in the WHL for defencemen, is that not elite talent? He had a 71 pt season again not bad offensive talent for a defenceman on a terrible offensively challenged team where he had to be the offensive catalyst. And he's not a one trick pony, he hits, he fights, he clears the front of the net & leans on players a lot defensively which is good defensive play wearing out your opponent something smaller players can't do.
Do you think 20 yr olds should be drafting players, guys there own age? Poulin is highly regarded in the NHL or should we be listening to the advise of all the teenaged internet podcasters out there? Is that how we should be running this team by the internet? What are their qualifications for deciding who is an elite skater & who is not?
People seemed to be really happy we signed Poulin & Staois & no more Dorion, it hasn't been one yr & you are already turning on them. I got shit on constantly because people thought I was defending Dorion, now I find myself defending this management team? Who do you want that will satisfy you in management? Keep in mind that it's not just the players who don't want to come to Ottawa but we have already seen a number of coaches don't want to come here either & I suspect in other levels of management.
